Mad Bum struggles, D-Backs fall on road
The matchup history favored Madison Bumgarner against Freddy Galvis with two outs in the bottom of the fifth inning, Bumgarner’s Diamondbacks trailing Galvis and the Philadelphia Phillies by two runs.
Bumgarner needed one more strike to get out of an inning in which he’d already given up a run. But Galvis, 3 for 21 in his career against the veteran left-hander before Sunday, made contact with a late swing on a pitch out of the strike zone, dropping a two-run single off the end of his bat into center field.
It was the hit that essentially ended Bumgarner’s frustrating afternoon in the Diamondbacks’ 7-4 loss to the Phillies Sunday, their third in a row.
Arizona ended their 10-game road trip with a 3-7 record. After the game, Bumgarner
said the outing was “as bad as I’ve ever been.”
“Had no feel for where the ball was going, slider was backing up, it was really bad. That’s as bad a game as I’ve thrown in a long time and it should have been a lot worse,” he said.
In a game in which Phillies star Bryce Harper created a stir by dropping down a successful sacrifice bunt
that led to two first-inning runs, Bumgarner couldn’t locate his inside pitches early and tied a season high with four walks in his five-inning start.
In pregame warmups on the mound, Bumgarner said he was throwing fastballs in the dirt, which is something he said he never does. But he felt most of his pitches in the fifth were close to where he wanted them, including the one to Galvis for the key hit.
“All those hits in the fifth... eye test says they weren’t hit very hard, which is what I’m after,” Bumgarner said. “They just hit them in the right spot.”
Bumgarner (7-9) allowed five runs on seven hits with three strikeouts. The Diamondbacks trailed 2-1 before the Phillies’ three-run fifth inning, and managed one run on a pair of doubles from Pavin Smith and Nick Ahmed in the seventh to make it 5-2.
The game saw recent minor-league call-up Jake McCarthy log his first major league hit, drive in his first run and record his very first big-league outfield assist.
“He’s an exciting player with real good body movement,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said of McCarthy. “He can do things on both sides of the baseball, and that’s what we want. We want guys that go out there and play the game full speed, offensively and defensively, and not back down.”
McCarthy, brought up from Triple-A
Reno on Friday, hit a two-out bloop double to right to drive in Carson Kelly in the top of the second. In the bottom of the seventh, he ended a Phillies’ scoring threat by throwing out Harper by a wide margin at home plate after catching a fly ball in right field.
McCarthy then picked up a second hit in the eighth off former Diamondback Archie Bradley, part of a two-run rally that cut the Phillies’ lead to one.
After McCarthy’s hit, pinch hitter Josh VanMeter walked to load the bases and give Ahmed a chance against his longtime ex-teammate with two outs. Ahmed delivered a sharp single to left, driving in David Peralta and McCarthy.
Phillies reliever Hector Neris came on and got Ketel Marte to fly out to end the inning.
The Diamondbacks turned in another good defensive play. Left fielder Josh Rojas kept a J.T. Realmuto sharp line drive in front of him, fielding the ball on a high hop. His throw to second base caught Realmuto in a rundown, and the Diamondbacks got the out between first and second bases.
But Rojas, moved to third base in the bottom of the inning, bobbled a Galvis ground ball for an error, and back-toback run-scoring triples followed off reliever Joe Mantiply. It was only the third time Rojas has played some third base this season.
“It’s a little bit frustrating to me and the rest of the staff, and I know the players as well. We’ve got to work harder to win margins out there,” Lovullo said. “We talk about, we prepare for, we give players the opportunity to understand how important it is to win those margins, and when we don’t, we fumble the snap a little bit like we did there in the bottom of eighth inning. We worked hard to close the gap to one run, but some plays that I thought should have been made, weren’t. It’s not the only time that’s happened, and you can see when it unravels, it happens quickly. That’s not what we’re preparing to do and we’ve got to tighten that up.”
Young called up again
The Diamondbacks recalled utility player Andrew Young from Triple-A Reno before Sunday’s game, releasing catcher Bryan Holaday from the roster, Young, who was in the lineup Sunday at second base, was hitting .282 with 16 doubles, 10 home runs and 28 runs batted in in 41 games with the Aces.
Young played in his first Diamondbacks game since July 30. He singled and went 1 for 4.
Holaday went 6 for 31 in 13 games for Arizona this season, striking out 15 times in compiling a .194 batting average.
Marte scuffles in center
Lovullo acknowledged the various defensive metrics that indicate that Marte is having a tough time on defense in the outfield. He seemed a bit slow to get to a fly ball in the seventh inning that he caught, but Harper was able to tag up and take third base. In the eighth, on a difficult play, he got a glove on what ended up being a triple when he couldn’t make the catch.
“It’s accurate. But all we can do is get that information and have him understand how important it is to play elite level defense, which he’s very capable of doing,” Lovullo said. “He’ll get there. He’s a very prideful guy, and he wants to make great plays. He wants to make the above average plays look routine.”
McCarthy family adventure
McCarthy said he had fun on Sunday despite his team’s loss, and that throwing out Harper at home was a special moment for him. The Scranton, Pa., native put on a show in his home state.
“The entire experience to be out there playing in front of my family and a lot of my high school friends, it was all just super special to take in,” McCarthy said.